If you have
horror stories about your
parents trying to use a
computer, this is the
node for you. Here are mine.
Double Clicking: For months, my
father could not grasp this
concept. After explaining to him at some length about just WHY he had to
double click, he spent
weeks trying to master this. He'd
click once, and then start to move the
mouse on the second click. This would drag the
icon he was trying to click on slightly, and I'd hear mumbled
curses from the other room about the damn icons not staying in the same place.
Advice: Even though my mother knows nothing about computers, and I'm a
Computer Science major in
college with years of practical hands-on
experience, she still tries to tell me how to use and
fix my computer. Whenever I try to give her helpful
advice if something breaks with
her computer or she's trying to do something
new, all I get is an earful of, "It's my computer, I'll do what I want." Of course, every time the computer
breaks down, she comes running to me to
magically fix it without even attempting to deal with it herself.
Learning: I've discussed this at length with my
friends, and we've discovered a fundamental difference between how our
generation uses new
technology and the way that
adults do. We go, "Cool! I don't know how to do that.
Teach me how to do it?" My parents go, "ACK! I have no idea how to do that! You have to do it for me!" My parents usually won't even attempt to
explore the computer or learn to do one damn thing without
running to me for
help first. Also, on the rare occasions they need to
learn how to do something by themselves (usually out of
necessity), they
write everything down. Everything. The problem with this approach is that they believe every single
program or thing they have to do is a totally different
process. Ergo, firing up
Netscape is radically different for them than firing up
Internet Explorer, and thus a seperate and meticulous entry for both of them needs to be written. In doing this, they fail to understand the computer itself and how it really
functions.
Getting a Computer In The First Place: For SEVENTEEN
YEARS, my parents
refused to buy me a computer. I even offered to pay for it with my own
money, which I'd been saving up for exactly that purpose, and still they refused. When I actually proved that I NEEDED one to do my
college applications and
Westinghouse Science Talent Search research project, they finally broke down and graciously let me buy myself a computer.
Fast forward one year. The
summer before I leave for college, my parents buy themselves a computer so that they can have one when I go to
school. They now claim that they couldn't live without one.